This has all been fun, but isn't the simplest explanation here that the competition really was 50/50 (Minchey progressed, Carr didn't), the beat latched onto the pro-Minchey elements of practice reports because that was an undeniably more interesting story, and things just snowballed into a narrative that continued to feed itself? I have a hard time believing this was an organized disinformation campaign (why would they do that to CJ? Why would they give false hope to Minchey?), so it can be true that:
- The beat actually was hearing more positive things about Minchey than Carr, but Freeman was so enamored with Carr's upside Minchey needed to really outplay CJ and he didn't do it by enough
- The sources that got cited on here were accurately hearing that the staff loved CJ so much it'd be difficult for him to be displaced. Maybe the coaching staff knew Carr's camp "struggles" were fixable or not representative of who they know he can be, saw the bigger picture, and weren't wavering on their pre-camp evaluation
It's fun to have an us-vs-them beef with the beat reporters, but my guess is that Carr entered with a big lead, didn't practice as well (beat reports were legit), but would have needed to slip a lot to lose the job and didn't do that (IE sources were legit).
This is my first post on here in a decade, by the way. Fun week.
